Rannaldini’s face was enigmatic, but there was a throb of excitement in his deep voice.
‘That’s horrific,’ said Flora, utterly revolted.
‘And probably apocryphal,’ said Rannaldini, idly examining a battered cherub, wondering if it could be restored. ‘The wind howl down the chimneys ’ere. That’s probably all the screaming people ’ear. Let’s go and play tennis.’
Rannaldini’s passion for Flora was severely tested on the tennis court. Unaware of the honour of being his partner, she simply didn’t try, and ducked, collapsing with laughter, each time Wolfie and Natasha, both powerful, much-coached players, hit the shocking pink balls straight at her. She and Rannaldini ended up in a screaming match.
‘Your father’s insanely competitive,’ she grumbled, as she and Wolfie cooled off in the big blue swimming-pool which was tiled like a Roman bath.
When he simmered down, Rannaldini was reduced to watching her through binoculars while she sunbathed topless, envying the Ambre Solaire Wolfie was rubbing into her high freckled breasts. At bedtime, peering through the montana, he caught a tantalizing glimpse of her undressing before she slipped on the outsize pyjamas which had come into fashion that summer. He imagined his hand stealing under the trouser elastic. With her cropped red hair, she’d be just like a schoolboy. Next moment he heard Wolfie’s door open and shut, followed by creaking floorboards, then Flora’s door opening and shutting. Then the light went out. Rannaldini was demented.
Stalking along the landing, he barged into Kitty’s bedroom without knocking. She was wearing a high-necked white cotton nightgown and knitting a custard-yellow jersey for her mother’s Christmas present. On the shelf were little bottles of shampoo, moisturizers and transparent bathcaps in cardboard packs which Rannaldini brought her from hotel bedrooms on trips abroad. She never threw out anything he gave her. Looking up at her husband in fear and longing, she waited for the next hammer blow.
‘Time for the real thing,’ said Rannaldini, dropping Danielle Steel on the floor.
Returning to the kitchen after waving goodbye to Natasha, Wolfie and Flora the following evening, Kitty gasped in horror. Flora had added a moustache, a squint, some long earrings and a mass of tight curls to Rannaldini’s poster on the cork board. Underneath she had written: STOP BEING SHITTY TO KITTY. Kitty removed it only just in time.
25
Over the next few weeks the heat wave intensified and so did Rannaldini’s obsessive passion; but whenever he flew home he found Wolfie and Flora wrapped round each other like Labrador puppies. He was in despair. Then, on the last Saturday in June, in the middle of Wimbledon fortnight, having despatched Kitty to stay with her excruciatingly dull, suburban mother, so he could install a two-way mirror between his dressing room and the spare room into which Flora had been moved, Rannaldini dropped in for a drink with Georgie and Guy.
As the sun had lost a little of its heat they sat out on the terrace, gazing down on a valley lit by white elderflower discs and garlanded by wild roses that shrivelled in an afternoon. Only docks, nettles and ragwort had been left by the ravenous sheep and cows. Both lake and river below it were dangerously low. Dinsdale panted gloomily under Georgie’s deck-chair.
Georgie, in a pair of oatmeal Bermuda shorts and a sage-green T-shirt, which showed the skin falling away from her upper arms and thighs, gazed into space. She had dried up like the valley around her. Great cracks split the footpaths. The ivy round the house was showering down yellow leaves and the lawns of Angel’s Reach, because Guy, unlike Rannaldini, observed the hose-pipe ban, had already turned brown.
Georgie and Guy were just reeling from another frightful row. While Guy was fussing around making Pimm’s, Georgie unbuttoned to Rannaldini.
‘Guy says he hasn’t seen Julia since her exhibition. Then he buggers off for two hours this afternoon and returns with poor Dinsdale utterly exhausted and reeking of Je Reviens. The shoe-maker’s children may be the worst shod, but adulterer’s dogs have the sorest paws.’
‘My dear, I cannot theenk why you’re upset.’ Rannaldini put a soothing hand on her razor-sharp shoulder. ‘You are cross with Guy so he seeks approval elsewhere. Having an affaire is like going on television, one gets the chance to talk at length about oneself in front of an admiring audience.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ pleaded Georgie. ‘If he needs her, why does he insist on sleeping with me all the time? I locked myself in the spare room last night and he broke the door down.’
‘Quite seemple,’ Rannaldini smiled. ‘He feel guilty and he know eef he stop fucking you, you will suspect something, and if he ees thinking so much of Julia, he needs the release.’
‘Ooo!’ said Georgie in anguish. ‘Is that the reason?’
‘My dear child, Guy will only really want you again when you find yourself a new man.’ He paused as Guy came out with a clinking tray.
‘Sorry, Rannaldini, I’d forgotten Pimm’s takes such a long time. Do you think Becker’s going to win?’
Guy, who always became more military when he sensed combat, had had a too short haircut. Rannaldini noticed with a stab of pain that Guy’s newly revealed, rather pointed, ears were very like Flora’s, as were his flat cheek-bones and square jaw. But Flora’s luminous white skin, her earthy animal features and big sulky mouth were all Georgie’s.
‘How’s my friend Kitty?’ asked Guy, putting a piece of mint in everyone’s glass.
‘Staying with her mother, a pair of clacking false teeth in an armchair, and sorting out my VAT,’ said Rannaldini.
‘Kitty’s a saint,’ said Guy heartily. ‘They always say behind every famous man there’s a clockwork wife.’
‘And behind every famous woman there’s a wildly unfaithful husband,’ snarled Georgie.
Turning puce, Guy shot a see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with glance at Rannaldini. Fortunately the telephone rang and Guy bounded in to answer it.
‘I found a bill for Janet Reger under the lining paper of his pants’ drawer,’ hissed Georgie. ‘Do you think he’ll claim VAT — virtue annihilated tax — on that? When in silks, paid for by Guy, my Julia goes, Christ!’
‘You are on form this evening,’ murmured Rannaldini noticing Georgie go quiet, trying to work out if Guy was talking in code.
‘Hallo, Sabine,’ he was saying. ‘Did you beat Radley yesterday?’
‘Single-handed, I should think,’ said Rannaldini.
Guy returned looking absolutely furious.
‘Sabine’s had to suspend Flora until the end of term for three offences: drinking in a pub, smoking in church — in church! — and being caught half-naked behind a combine harvester this afternoon with your son, I’m afraid, Rannaldini.’
‘L’après-midi d’un fornicator,’ said Rannaldini, enviously.
‘Hell, it’s only a few fags, half a bottle of Sancerre and a roll in the hay,’ said Georgie, who thought it was funny. ‘At least she’s gone astray with the right sort of chap.’ She clinked her glass against Rannaldini’s. ‘Has Wolfie been suspended, too?’
‘Evidently not. He wasn’t caught smoking and drinking and the XI’s got a needle match against Marlborough tomorrow and Wolfgang still has two A levels to take. Flora shouldn’t have got caught,’ said Guy disapprovingly.
‘That’s always been your attitude,’ said Georgie flaring up.
‘I never did anything wrong,’ snapped back Guy.
Rannaldini was ecstatic. At last a chance to get Flora on her own while Wolfie and Natasha were still incarcerated.